‘Stimulate’ Oakland

Paul Krugman must be watching the news on the Occupy protests with bated breath. You see if things keep going the way of the Oakland protests, he won’t have to wait for aliens to invade in order to see his grand idea of economic “stimulus” play out.

Who needs the unnecessary risk of a UFO taking out too much of a city when we have thousands of protestors throughout the nation that are willing and able to do their part to help “stimulate” the economy by creating thousands of jobs that would otherwise not exist. Think of all of the people that either are or will be put to work due to all of these protesters and the damage they cause — garbage collectors, police, firemen, landscapers (all union of course) and now glaziers. The list will no doubt grow.

Obama may even be able to forget about trying to push a new, new “jobs bill” if all of these protests end up getting destructive enough.

Of course those of us that are grounded in reality understand this is merely akin to trying to fill a swimming pool by taking water from the shallow end and dumping it into the deep end. Better yet, Frederic Bastiat’s example: The Broken Window in his 1850 essay That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, may be more relevant to our current times.

Maybe Obama should stop referring to these protests as “Occupy” movements and start calling them what he most likely thinks they are: “Stimulate Wall Street”, “Stimulate Chicago”, “Stimulate Oakland”, etc. If Obama gets lucky, maybe before this is all over there will end up being a bridge somewhere that needs rebuilding.